1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to providing consistent user interfaces to users of computers and, more particularly, to a personalizing User Interface Agent which operates by learning user preferences and behaviors on a primary computer and, through knowledge of a host computer's capabilities, by reasoning to predict a user's preferred interface on the host computer.
2. Background Description
The number of different operating systems and hardware platforms for computers has increased substantially. Also, more people are using a wider variety of computers in various situations. Typically, work, school, home, public libraries, and Internet cafes may all have different operating systems and/or operating system defaults.
One disadvantage of using a variety of computers with different default settings and operating systems is that the amount of time and effort needed for a user to learn how to use all the different types of computers is staggering. Another disadvantage, particularly for non-expert computer users and people with disabilities, is that the users may be prevented from using computers either because they are not familiar enough with the computer environments or because the default settings are not appropriate.
The general problem of a consistent or similar user-interface has been considered by IBM in their “Portable Personality” product as described by Victor D. Chase in “Wherever you go, there you are”, IBM Research, Number 2, (2000). This is a software/hardware product that duplicates many aspects of a Windows operating system user interface on host computers by using IBM's “Microdrive” hardware. The “Microdrive” hardware is a tiny disk drive that can hold up to 1 gigabyte (GB) and can carry personal settings which are automatically inserted into a host machine and removed when the hardware is removed. A utility program that is part of the software package is installed on the principal computer and copies the user profile to the “Microdrive” hardware. In the process, the utility program copies all documents listed as “recent”, as well as the software used to create the documents. At the secondary computer, the user inserts the “Microdrive” hardware into the computer's PC card slot, and the computer immediately looks and acts like the principal computer. While the “Portable Personality” product offers the significant advantage of reducing what must be carried between locations, this software/hardware product has the disadvantages of requiring expensive and specialized hardware to run, working on only one operating system, and copying rather than leaming the user's preferences.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,983,273 to Christopher M. White et al., assigned to Web TV Networks, describes a similar product using smart card hardware that has similar drawbacks. In the White et al. system, an Internet terminal reads identification information from a smart card and transmits the identification information to a server. The server locates configuration information associated with a particular user of the server and downloads the configuration information to the Internet terminal.
A solution to the problem of providing a consistent or similar user-interface between computers without the drawbacks of prior solutions is needed.